What if.....

So, Bryan said it's my turn to write something, so...here I am. What to write? Well...what's been on my mind lately is...what if...what if at this time of my life, I'm still living here in Thailand all this time? What if I had never moved to America? What would my life look like? What would I be doing right now for a living? Would I be married? And to whom? Children? But most importantly, would I have God in my life?

As I observe life here, and remembering how life was for me in my younger days, I think my life would have been no life at all. Life is very hard for the poor especially the kids and the elderly here, and poor is what it was for my family when I was young. I could say more like poverty level as we lived in a slum area of Bangkok. One of these days I really have to write all this down in detail somewhere. Anyway, I was going to school, my mom saw to that, thanks mom. But I don't know how far, because state school only goes to 8th grade, after that it costs to go, and no money for that. So...today if I still lived in Bangkok, I would most likely be...a street vendor worker, a lottery ticket seller, a street sweeper or worse I might have been in prostitution in my younger days and now still doing something in that area, who knows? I don't know as far as marriage or children, but I probably would go to temple daily, giving lots of offerings hoping for a better life in the next.


As I see it, God had His hand on my life even before I got to the USA...well, even before I was born. I thank God for His guiding on my life, keeping me whole with all that happened to me as a child, the sacrifice my mom made so that I could come to America, even though I didn't really want to. Giving me a stepfather that cared for me even though we couldn't communicate very well. Leading me to university near Spokane so that I could meet Bryan, my husband. Giving us Christa, Matt, and Andi, and later all the grand babies. Sometimes it overwhelms me to think, what if... then I praise God for all He has done. And I pray for Thailand...

It has been mixed feelings, as most of you who follow and support us know (by the way, thank you so much for that). The feeling of missing our family and friends, of not quite knowing what we are doing here when things are not going the way we think they should go, and also the adjustments we have to make as we go. Sometimes I see Bryan trying so hard to do "Thai" and not quite getting it, I feel bad for him. Or the slow motion of things that should not take that long to do or start...we think, why?

Then, there are times that I know I am where God wants me to be. In obedience, I am first of all here to support my husband in his calling, to connect back with my roots before I'm too old, and I am here to represent Him (God) as I live among the people He puts in front of me daily (living "life"), this include my girls I work with at New Life Center as well.

So, those are some of my thoughts these days. Now we try to take it a day at a time, thinking only how we can be the best to the person in front of us right now..... Please pray, we do need it daily.

Thank you for your time........... God Bless, Kalya

Easier Said Than Done...

There is a reason that people do what Kalya and I are doing when they are young. I think it took being here to really start to fully realize that. What are some of the things about being young that seem to make it so different? The obvious is ...  BEING YOUNG! But with that said there is something about being naive and, in a sense, foolish when you are young that makes embarking on a journey half way around the world somehow exciting. When you are young you have this feeling of invincibility that allows you to roll with the punches and not get too rattled. Your whole life is ahead of you and you are ready to conquer the world. As we set out to make the move to Thailand I thought, even in middle age, I had all of those qualities. We sold most everything large; all of our cars, half of our furniture, in fact, except for some pieces of furniture, everything else that we owned was stored in a small bedroom in the basement of our house that, yes, we did keep. I really felt ready to conquer the world with my favorite team-mate in the world, Kalya. As we were making preparations to come to Thailand and selling many things I kept thinking, "No worries, everything will fall perfectly into place when we get there."

Things really aren't so much the same, after all, when you are older. In fact, as I think back now about the day we left I can't get out of my mind our grandson, Gage, lying with Kalya on the couch crying harder than I have ever heard him cry and Kalya and I totally losing it with so many, many doubts flooding our minds, "What are we doing", "Why would we ever want to leave." It was no different when we went over to Christa's and Erik's to say goodbye to the other grand children. The same emotions with the boys and huge emotions as we watched Ella asleep in her crib not able to hold her just one last time before we left. Except for Ella's long fight to live and God's miracle to save her, I have never felt so numb and empty inside. When you're older there is so much that you are hanging on to and it is so hard to let go. In fact, in many ways you can't and you don't let go. Embarking on this journey at this stage of our life is different in that we don't have this carefree sense of an entire life ahead of us. On the contrary, it is this knowledge of a full life already behind us. It's a feeling of what if we don't stay? Will that mean that we somehow failed? Will that mean that all of the amazing things that led up to this moment of being here were completely misread? I don't know the answer to these questions but I think about them a lot.

As human beings we tend to think a lot about the past and the future. In fact we think about it so much that I think we forget about right now, this moment, the present. Why do we do that? What is it that is so hard about living in the moment? Being the best, most Christ-like person that you can be right now. That is the lesson I think I am really beginning to learn, live in the moment and shine the love of Christ in the present. The past is past and the future is in God's hands, but this present moment offers choices. The Apostle Paul said it very well in 1 Corinthians 13:

"Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails..."

Think about that. All of those qualities of love can only be done in the now, in the present. That's what I want to be doing whether we are here in Thailand or home again in Spokane. Regardless of where we are there is a world of people in need that we need to be present with and showing love in the moment. We miss our family so much. I never realized how much of an effect the separation from our family would have on me until I got here and have been apart from them now for nearly 4 months. But there are people here in Thailand that we come in contact with each and every day and Kalya and I both agree that we need to show Christ here and now and not get paralyzed by living in the past or worrying about the future. We need to be set free to live in the moment and bring honor and glory to Christ in this place, right now.

Having said all of that, there is one future moment we can't help but think about. November 10 is soon approaching and I know that we will feel an emptiness and sadness not being home to share in Ella's first birthday. The closer we get to that day the more choked up I feel knowing that she will be in Spokane and we will be here in Thailand. Her miracle story of life and healing is such a huge part of all of our lives and I know that we will sorely miss not celebrating her birthday in person.

Please pray for us and thanks for keeping up with us through the blog.

~Bryan and Kalya